


Fireflies in the Forge

by Duskdog



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Family, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 08:49:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12908448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duskdog/pseuds/Duskdog
Summary: Baby Brigitte was shaped as much by her father's forge as any of his machines ever were.





	Fireflies in the Forge

Brigitte Lindholm’s earliest memories are of complete and utter overstimulation.  
  
_CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! Tink! Tink! Tink!_  
  
The sound of hammer on metal changes tone depending on what it’s hammering, and how far into the work it is. Like the music her father sometimes pipes into the workshop, she instinctively finds some sounds more pleasing than others. She learns, without even being able to see properly over the edge of the playpen, which sounds are good and which are bad. She gurbles and fusses at Papa, across the room, until his hammer works the bad noises out of the metal and makes the good ones instead -- and when the good noises come, his expression always changes, too. Papa is pleased. Brigitte is pleased.  
  
_Click click whirrrrrrrrr! Click click whirrrrrrrr!_  
  
The workshop is never quiet. Machines stilt and sputter, in various stages of completion and repair, and the _clank_ and _tink_ their movements is positively musical. Sometimes their engines grunt and gurgle their way awkwardly to life, and sometimes they _purr,_ and Brigitte argues in serious baby burbles with the gurglers, and hums contentedly along with the purrers.  
  
_Puttputtputtputtputt!_  
  
There are turrets -- many of them -- but the small one high above Brigitte’s playpen is the one she knows the best. As an infant, she lay on her back and watched it the way that other babies watch colorful mobiles, occupied by its steady rotation side to side, the gentle bobbing motion it makes with each puttering click of movement. As a toddler, she reaches for it, tries to climb, but it remains far out of her reach, and so after a while she just takes comfort in the steady, ever-present sound of it as she watches everything else in the room. Whenever Papa puts her down in her pen, the first thing he does is climb a ladder to check the turret. It’s working as intended -- no danger to _her_ , plenty of danger to anyone who might try to hurt her. Papa looks satisfied, tells her that she is safe. And so Brigitte hears the sound of a turret, and knows that she is safe.  
  
_Vrmmmmmmm…_  
  
The low, heavy electric hum of power is ever-present, but only truly noticeable when it… _stops_. Something is _broken_. But Brigitte cannot tell _what_ , and so she leans against the railing of the playpen, reaching over towards Papa, grasping repeatedly at the air and whining her distress.  
  
_TICK. TOCK. TICK. TOCK._  
  
The rhythmic motion of turning gears holds her attention. They move, and she loves things that move. They click steadily, _perfectly_ , teeth fitting together with such exquisite precision that Brigitte is _satisfied_ on a level too deep to explain. Pistons pump and churn, _chug chug chug_ , and she watches those, too, enraptured by the reliable _rightness_ of them. Whenever she isn’t in the workshop (and often she isn’t -- Mama does not like her being in the workshop, and Papa says it’s no place for children), she plays with the shape toy instead, using her little hammer to bop the blocks into the correctly-shaped holes. It isn’t as nice as the gears or the pistons. Her rhythm isn’t good yet. But it satisfies her in the same way, if not quite to the same degree.  
  
The scent of grease and smoke clings to everything that spends even a few minutes in the workshop, and Brigitte is no exception. Mama complains, says she doesn’t mind it so much on Papa (maybe even likes it a little bit), but she draws the line at having to scrub it out of the baby’s hide constantly. Mama likes having a _daughter_ , and puts her hair in little pigtails with bows, and puts her in frilly little dresses that make everyone say _awwww!_ . Brigitte doesn’t care, really -- she barely notices the frills that are not interesting enough to have a preference about -- but she fights and squirms in the bath, because what Mama calls _clean_ smells like _nothing at all_ to Brigitte. It’s distressing. She craves metal and ozone and smoke that makes her eyes burn and water. The air in the workshop is thick and hot, and it surrounds her like a blanket, like Papa’s big arms when he holds her and envelopes her in the scent of grease and sweat that clings to his overalls. She flumps down face-first in the playpen, wriggling and wallowing in the smells of the workshop that have grown there.  
  
Energy arcs between two panels, and she uses the railing to pull herself up to stand on wobbly legs so that she can see. Electricity reflects in half a dozen polished metal surfaces, creating ghostly glowing spiderwebs that light the workshop in blue for split-second flashes at a time. She coos -- _oooooooahhhh_! -- and shoves a chubby fist in her mouth, eyes wide and waiting for the next burst of color. Sparks fly, wild and free, from the coals of the forge, and more with every stroke of Papa’s hammer. They dance like fireflies, and she reaches for them, unable to understand that they are much farther away from her than they seem. It doesn’t matter -- fireflies aren’t really meant to be caught -- and Brigitte squeals with delight anyway, waving her little arms and flexing her tiny fingers needily.  
  
Energy sparks again, and the bellows makes a great heaving breath that fills the room with the scent of coal and molten metal, and the turret putt-putts , and the gears click and tick, and Brigitte grasps at nothing and at everything, wild peals of laughter filling the workshop.  
  


* * *

  
  
The sound of a hysterical toddler filtering in above his music makes Torbjorn pause. He puts his hammer down and pulls out an earbud.  
  
“What are you on about over there?” he asks his daughter, who may as well be in another world entirely.  
  
He worries about her when she gets like this: her eyes as wide as saucers but not focusing on anything in particular, her hands grasping wildly at nothing, squealing and giggling and babbling at whatever invisible thing that she’s probably been talking to all this time. He keeps an eye on her when he’s working while keeping her -- contrary to what his wife seems to think -- and he’s been aware that she’s been keeping herself busy in the playpen talking to who-knows-what. He approaches the playpen -- “Brigitte?” -- but she doesn’t respond. At least not to _him_.  
  
Is this normal? He doesn’t know how to ask. Well, he _does_ know how to ask (he’s a blunt man, after all), but it started a big fight with his wife the last time he hinted at his concerns, and he doesn’t like fighting with her in the scant time they have to spend together between his engineering work and his other duties to Overwatch. Ana says that Brigitte is a much more pleasant baby than Fareeha ever was, and that he’s lucky. But he doesn’t like to ask Ana for advice outright, because there’s a stubborn part of him that hates playing the role of the inexperienced apprentice in _anything_ \-- particularly with Ana, who already spends far too much time perched smugly on her high horse, in his opinion.  
  
And there’s an even more stubborn part of him that doesn’t want to hint in any way, shape, or form that _his_ baby might be inferior in any way to _hers_ (or anyone else’s).  
  
Brigitte’s eyes happen to track across his face, and she stops, blinks, and then focuses on him at last. Her freckled cheeks bunch into a smile brighter than any he’s ever seen, and she reaches up for him, grasping urgently.  
  
“ _Pa_ ..!” she squeals. “ _Pa_ !”  
  
She’s getting bigger and heavier every day, he reflects, as he lifts her from the playpen and cradles her close, her entire body trembling with excitement. When the doctor said she was healthy, that she’d be _normal_ in size (or even big!), Torbjorn had nearly cried. His wife had asked him if it was because he was relieved that she’d be spared that extra pain, or disappointed that they wouldn’t have a beautiful dwarf daughter. At the time it had been a mix of both. Now, though, he can’t imagine Brigitte any other way. She’s going to be a tall person, and he’s happy for her, even though he knows that it will hurt on the day when she gets too big for him to hold.  
  
She makes little fists in the muttonchops on either side of his face and looks up at him with big green eyes. They aren’t her mother’s eyes, not precisely, but nor are they his. They’re _hers_ entirely, and that makes a lot more sense to him than the ridiculous things people say when they try to claim a tiny baby looks like this person or that person. He’d like to think that, if he had been able to form her the same way he forms his machines -- with conscious thought, and planning, and every curve shaped by his own two hands -- he would build her to be a unique and special creature, not just an amalgamation of her parents’ parts.  
  
But it seems that nature took care of that for him. He did nothing, really, and yet she’s the greatest thing he has ever created even so, bright and happy and with such clear intelligence and curiosity shining in her eyes that it makes him want to show her _everything_ . She’s _nothing_ like him. She’s sweet and trusting, bold and gregarious. She hasn’t shown even a hint of standoffishness, hasn’t ever met a stranger.  
  
“ _Pa_ ,” she says softly, snuggling up against his neck.  
  
He pats her tiny back gently with one broad hand, swaying just a little bit in the way that she seems to like, and puts his earlier concerns about her behavior aside. She’s _perfect_ exactly as she is. 


End file.
